


Hollow Ground Rising

by sharkduck



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Fallen Hero spoilers, Hollow Ground Is A Re-Gene, Hollow Ground Is Not A Telepath, Retribution Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 00:53:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkduck/pseuds/sharkduck
Summary: Hollow Ground considers the day they destroyed downtown Los Diablos their birthday.





	Hollow Ground Rising

You spit blood into the bathroom sink, watch it stick to the grime already caked on the porcelain. Slowly, painfully slowly, you glance up into the cracked mirror, seeing a shell staring back at you. Your eyes sunken and hollow, red clouding the whites of one of them – a burst blood vessel, spreading like a disease. You taste pennies. Your face is white. You look sick – a skeleton. No flesh, no semblance of humanity.

Laughable. Pathetic.

Thinking you’re human. Thinking you can have something better.

…But you can. And you will. You made a promise to yourself that you wouldn’t let the self-doubt get to you; that you’ll burn this city down to get what you want. And what you want is power. Control. Safety. You _will_ get it.

You repeat that in your head like a mantra as you unbutton your shirt and stare down at your chest, heart pounding with excitement, and fear. Skin clammy, a cold sweat beading on the back of your neck.

The barcode on your chest is stark against your skin, bright red. Like blood. You take off your shirt entirely, seeing the bands of circles and lines on your arms, your stomach, around your shoulders. Marking you as a tool. Little did they know.

You grin in the mirror, finding blood streaked through your teeth. Like you tore someone’s throat out, ripped into their neck and came away with their sinew on your gums. You look scary. You look like a monster.

You probably are.

You turn on the water and wait for it to stop running brown before you cup your hands under the faucet and take a gulp, tasting more metal; it does nothing to wash the iron out of your mouth, but at least your teeth are slightly cleaner than they were. No longer stained red. White. Normal. As normal as you can be, given what you just did; you can still hear the sirens outside, rushing to the latest catastrophe. A quake, ripping apart the financial district, fire spreading to nearby buildings, asphalt cracking under your feet.

You’ll look on the day fondly in the future. Your second birth, rising from the ashes that are scattering the city, a blanket for your newborn self.

Destroying the financial center of the city created a chasm almost as wide as the physical chasm you left in Figueroa Street, one you intend to fill and saturate. Make Los Diablos yours; that’s your goal for the future. So no one can hurt you ever again. You’ll have more than enough power and influence to keep the wolves off your back.

And if they come for you again, you know to go for the throat this time.

You shrug off your shirt and pants, glancing out the window to look at the burnt orange glow against the night sky from the financial offices that are still up in flames, feeling like they’re birthday candles on this city-wide cake that you plan to devour yourself. Ravenous, never full, your mouth stained red. You lean against the wall of your dingy, third-rate apartment – soon enough, you’ll leave this place behind for greener grass. You might even miss it; it’s been your base of operations for so long.

But you deserve better than a tiny one-bedroom with barely-working amenities and rats in the walls. For a while, you sit there and watch firetrucks and police cruisers fly by in blurs of red and blue, fantasizing about what your new apartment would look like. Something with a lot of windows, to let in the sunlight that you’ve been denied for so long. It’ll never look like a cell. Not like this place. Not ever again.

And it’ll be red. Like the suit you tug on, too expensive for you, stolen from a tailor who didn’t know you couldn’t pay and can’t tell anyone about you now, six feet under as she is. Red like the burst blood vessel in your eye, like the barcode and tattoos covering your skin. Like the firetrucks desperately trying to put out the gas fires your antics started.

You walk back into the bathroom to comb your fingers through your hair, making sure you’re semi-presentable before you head out into the city again, a pep in your step. A new dawn on the horizon.

Hollow Ground. Your new name. You’ll make sure the city knows it intimately.


End file.
